Top 9 Free Tools and Resources to Monitor and Optimize Energy Use in Industrial Facilities
Energy waste can quietly drain budgets and stall sustainability goals—especially across multisite commercial and industrial operations. With our customers that have multiple facilities across the globe, standardization of processes and metrics is critical to effective energy management. For this reason, we have developed this list of tools that is meant to provide a lowest cost of implementation for our customers who are looking to monitor their energy usage.
Shown below are a list of powerful free tools and resources that can help you track, analyze, and reduce energy use effectively.
Whether you're managing a manufacturing plant, warehouse, or corporate office, this guide from Emergent Energy Solutions shares 10 of the best free tools and training resources to help your team cut energy costs and boost performance.
1. 9 Free Tools to Monitor and Optimize Energy Use
1. ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager
Benchmark energy and water usage across facilities. Widely used by commercial building operators. The platform allows the user to benchmark their building's performance against other buildings of similar type and size. This will provide guidance on how their building is performing as it provides an Energy Star score based on the provided energy data and building size. This platform also acts as the primary energy tracking tool used by cities and municipalities that are participating in the benchmarking regulations.
2. DOE’s EnergyPlus™
Advanced building energy simulation tool for analyzing HVAC, lighting, and building envelopes. EnergyPlus™ is a whole building energy simulation program that engineers, architects, and researchers use to model both energy consumption—for heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting and plug and process loads—and water use in buildings. Some of the notable features and capabilities of EnergyPlus include:
- Integrated, simultaneous solution of thermal zone conditions and HVAC system response that does not assume that the HVAC system can meet zone loads and can simulate un-conditioned and under-conditioned spaces.
- Heat balance-based solution of radiant and convective effects that produce surface temperatures thermal comfort and condensation calculations.
- Sub-hourly, user-definable time steps for interaction between thermal zones and the environment; with automatically varied time steps for interactions between thermal zones and HVAC systems. These allow EnergyPlus to model systems with fast dynamics while also trading off simulation speed for precision.
- Combined heat and mass transfer model that accounts for air movement between zones.
- Advanced fenestration models including controllable window blinds, electrochromic glazings, and layer-by-layer heat balances that calculate solar energy absorbed by window panes.
- Illuminance and glare calculations for reporting visual comfort and driving lighting controls.
- Component-based HVAC that supports both standard and novel system configurations.
- A large number of built-in HVAC and lighting control strategies and an extensible runtime scripting system for user-defined control.
- Functional Mockup Interface import and export for co-simulation with other engines.
- Standard summary and detailed output reports as well as user definable reports with selectable time-resolution from annual to sub-hourly, all with energy source multipliers.
EnergyPlus is a console-based program that reads input and writes output to text files. It ships with a number of utilities including IDF-Editor for creating input files using a simple spreadsheet-like interface, EP-Launch for managing input and output files and performing batch simulations, and EP-Compare for graphically comparing the results of two or more simulations. Several comprehensive tools for EnergyPlus are also available. DOE does most of its work with EnergyPlus using the OpenStudio software development kit and suite of applications.
DOE releases major updates to EnergyPlus twice annually. An updated version 25.1.0 with bug fixes was released on March 31, 2025.
EnergyPlus is free, open-source, and cross-platform—it runs on the Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux operating systems. Its development is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Building Technologies Office (BTO). Along with OpenStudio, EnergyPlus is part of BTO’s building energy modeling program portfolio.
3. RETScreen® Expert (Viewer Version)
Energy project feasibility analysis and performance tracking software.
The RETScreen® Clean Energy Management Software platform enables low-cost energy planning, implementation, monitoring and reporting.
RETScreen Expert, an advanced premium version of the software, is available in Viewer mode completely free-of-charge.
4. OpenEI Utility Rate Database
Compare utility rates and incentives across U.S. utilities.
5. BuildingSync®
Standardized format for sharing commercial building energy audit data.
6. NREL’s System Advisor Model (SAM)
Great for modeling the performance and financial returns of solar, wind, and storage systems.
The System Advisor Model™ (SAM™) is a free desktop application for techno-economic analysis of energy technologies. It is used by project managers and engineers, policy analysts, technology developers, and researchers to investigate questions about the technical, economic, and financial feasibility of renewable energy projects.
SAM can model many types of renewable energy systems:
- Photovoltaic systems, from small residential rooftop to large utility-scale systems
- Battery storage with Lithium ion, lead acid, or flow batteries for front-of-meter or behind-the-meter applications
- Concentrating Solar Power systems for electric power generation, including parabolic trough, power tower, and linear Fresnel
- Industrial process heat from parabolic trough and linear Fresnel systems
- Wind power, from individual turbines to large wind farms
- Marine energy wave and tidal systems
- Solar water heating
- Fuel cells
- Geothermal power generation
- Biomass combustion for power generation
- High concentration photovoltaic systems
SAM's financial models are for the following types of projects:
- Residential and commercial projects where the renewable energy system is on the customer side of the electric utility meter (behind the meter), and power from the system is used to reduce the customer's electricity bill.
- Power purchase agreement (PPA) projects where the system is connected to the grid at an interconnection point, and the project earns revenue through power sales. The project may be owned and operated by a single owner or by a partnership involving a flip or leaseback arrangement.
- Third party ownership where the system is installed on the customer's (host) property and owned by a separate entity (developer), and the host is compensated for power generated by the system through either a PPA or lease agreement.
7. EcoEnergy Insights (Free Tools)
Cloud-based analytics for HVAC, lighting, and other systems (limited free access).
8. USGBC ARC Platform (Free Tier)
Track building performance data related to energy, waste, and indoor environmental quality.
9. CBECS Data Query Tool
Analyze historical energy usage data from U.S. commercial buildings for benchmarking.
2. Best Free Training Resources for Facility Managers
1. DOE Better Buildings Workforce Training
Online courses and credential prep in energy management, HVAC, lighting, and building operations.
The building sector is constantly evolving to keep up with the latest industry trends and technological developments. If you are a student interested in learning more about the industry, a professional new to the field, or an experienced practitioner searching for relevant continuing education credits for your credentials, the following resources offer a variety of training materials and opportunities.
2. ENERGY STAR Training Center
Free webinars and resources on benchmarking, upgrades, and best practices. ENERGY STAR Training Center - a resource to help partners improve their sales effectiveness. Here you’ll find tools and information to help you convey to your staff, customers, or business partners how ENERGY STAR can help them protect the environment while saving energy and money.
3. BOMI International Resource Center
Free whitepapers and operational guides for building and facility professionals. BOMA/BOMI is dedicated to improving the skills of professionals with property, facilities, and building engineer responsibilities. With these courses, you can always find the information you need to advance your career and grow your professional skills.
Hundreds of no-cost technical courses in energy, water, and resilience.
The Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) offers training to develop and sustain a high-performance federal workforce that constructs, operates, and maintains energy-efficient and cost-effective federal facilities and fleets.
FEMP training offerings include:
- Live online webinars
- Live onsite workshops
- On-demand courses
- Energy Exchange
These free tools and training resources are powerful assets for any facility or energy manager. Start with benchmarking, then build capacity within your team to act on data and deliver impactful savings across sites.
Need Help Getting Started?
We help multisite organizations implement these tools, train facility teams, and build tailored action plans.
Contact Emergent Energy Solutions to schedule a free strategy call or request access to our custom toolkits.